The Home of Australian Craft Beer

New Beers

Barely a day goes by without another seasonal or one-off special flying out of an Australian brewery (if not ten). Here and in our weekly newsletter, we'll bring you news and, if we've sampled them, our take on as many of them as possible. Happy hunting!

Tapped December 21st, 2018

As 2018 draws to a close, Burnley Brewing has looked to capture the season in a can by releasing a summer ale. It’s the brewery’s first beer to make it into 355ml cans too, rather than their standard 440ml affairs, the thinking there being, if you’re going to build a beer designed for enjoying in the sun, you want it to cool down quickly and disappear fast before the sun's rays have a chance to go to work.
As for what’s inside, it’s a particularly pale drop in which, on the hop front, it…
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Tapped December 20th, 2018

Somewhat reflecting the changing beer landscape as much as the seasons, Eagle Bay’s new Brewers Series Summer release is a nimble India Pale Lager. If anything feels like the brewery’s coastal home over the warmer months, it’s probably this beer: light, fun and designed for sharing with mates, probably after a dip in the turquoise waters of Eagle Bay.
Soft mango, lime peel citrus, gooseberry and melon aromas rise from the light straw-coloured beer. Spritzy carbonation rides throughout, somewhat…
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Tapped December 20th, 2018

They're fans of the outdoor life at Little Rivers in Tasmania's north-east and, rather appropriately, have put a couple of limited release beers into cans as the summer holidays approach. One sits roughly in the realm of a NEIPA – or East Coast IPA, as the brewers prefer – but comes with added rye alongside the Galaxy, Mosaic and Kohatu hops. It's Ryed The Tide and, with some caramel malts in there alongside the rye, it's a maltier affair than most of the hazy IPAs you'll have come across. You'll…
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Tapped December 20th, 2018

Over the first two years of Rocky Ridge’s life, there have been times when releasing brewery-only beers has almost appeared like an afterthought, such has been the volume of collaborations. When they do release something of their own volition, it’s usually close or above double digits in terms of booze content, has sat in barrels for months or swells with half of last summer’s hop crop. You’d be forgiven for wondering whether there’s actually a core range at all; well, yes folks, there…
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Tapped December 20th, 2018

In a craft brewing scene rapidly filling with fruited kettle sours, Temple’s Okinawa Sour stands somewhat apart from the crowd. Largely, that’s thanks to the inclusion of the shikuwasa fruit, which is only grown in two regions in the world, Taiwan and the Okinawa province of Japan.
Temple’s beer makes full use of the shikuwasa, which sits somewhere between a lime and a yuzu on the flavour spectrum, to create what's quite the quaffable drop. Okinawa Sour combines a citrus zest with a slight…
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Tapped December 19th, 2018

The weather is heating up, which means the seasonally adjustable brewing team at Bruny Island is back, like a 19th century Franconian version of SL2, on a saison tip. In the past 18 months, whenever they've headed in this direction it's typically been with other yeasty elements at play, from the deliciously judged Brettanomyces character in Beautiful Ugly to the "Cop a load of this!" of the likes of Saison d'Entrecasteaux. But here it's just a Belgian saison yeast, left to do its work alongside…
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Tapped December 19th, 2018

Within Australia's craftier beer circles, it's the likes of Little Dove and limited releases such as their IIPA and Sea Devil imperial stout that will have captured drinkers' attention. Yet it's been Single Fin that's been doing much of the heavy lifting as the brewery has enjoyed rapid growth since shedding Woolworths as a partner. The summer ale crashed the top five in the 2017 GABS Hottest 100 poll, in mid-strength form is one of the offerings for patrons at the new Perth Stadium and, according…
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Tapped December 19th, 2018

WA Beer Week provided a rare opportunity for former colleagues to catch up and share a beer. While they were at it, they thought it might be worth making a beer, given they all met while working at Gage Roads many years previously. So, Charlie Hodgson (Helios), Lachy Crowthers (Ballistic) and Eddie Still gathered around Nowhereman’s whirlpool to create a sessionable summer sour, something that would suit the humid Queensland weather as much as the dry Perth heat.
Riffing on the familiar flavoured…
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Tapped December 18th, 2018

Red Hill's Christmas Ale was one of the brewery's very first seasonal releases, designed in conjunction with NZ-based Belgian ale maestro Ben Middlemiss, and is one that has reappeared every year since. Little has changed in that time, although there has been the odd spin-off such as last year's brandy-soaked barrel-aged partner-in-crime. And now, for the 2018 release, there's another change as it becomes one of the first Red Hill beers to appear bearing the brewery's new look.
Almost 15 years after…
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Tapped December 18th, 2018

A few years ago, we did a Getting Blind With Crafty tasting of golden ales (remember when they were the rage?). One of the beers on the lineup was Red Hill's Golden Ale. It was their biggest seller and one that had been around longer than most, after all. At the same time, it wasn't a golden ale as understood these days – for the most part, toned down pale ales that still have some sort of light malt and fruity hop character. There's was created in the spirit of the Kolsch style from Cologne, so…
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Tapped December 18th, 2018

Willie Simpson has been around the blocks of the beer world, both as a beer writer and brewer, but more than ten years into his tenure at the helm of Seven Sheds, there still seems to be plenty of inspiration out there.
Celebrating another milestone – the 400th batch of Seven Sheds beer – he's released the Platypus 400, a dark brown ale, loaded up with a labyrinth of malt varieties and combined with locally-sourced ingredients from Willie’s neighbours in Tasmania’s north-west: organic buckwheat…
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Dark Brown

Style

Buckwheat & Hemp Dark Ale

ABV

6.0%

Stockists

Just 666 750ml bottles were packaged off, with Seven Sheds’ tasting room in Railton the best place to find one.

Tapped December 18th, 2018

What better way to celebrate the festive season than by using the combined talents of your former colleagues to create a massive barleywine ready to take the edge off a summer heatwave? Having worked with former Temple man Ron Feruglio at Homestead and Joel at The DTC, Indi’s head brewer Jackson Purser knew the group would be just the right mix to create malt driven magic before setting the beer to rest in ex-Heaven Hill bourbon barrels for six months.
The result is an opulent and incredibly well-balanced…
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Tapped December 17th, 2018

While we wouldn't like to say with absolute certainty that Moon Dog's original Splice of Heaven – the pine-lime version created in collaboration with Beer DeLuxe – was the first local IPA to feature lactose, it was definitely among the earliest. It seemed rather out there at the time – a whole three years ago – but such things are pretty much common or garden these days. And, as they've brought the Splice of Heaven beers back, the Moon Dog team has headed in the other direction, dropping…
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Tapped December 17th, 2018

This year’s Scrimshaw seasonal release from Green Beacon is more restrained than in previous years. With the punchy Windjammer in the core range, and bangers like Whaler Blood Orange IPA, Red’s Dead Red IPA and Uppercut IIPA showing up at various times in recent months, this clean and refreshing Australian IPA provides an easy-drinking counterbalance to some of those hop explosions.
The 2018 Scrimshaw is cloudy in the glass, and the nose is full of pineapple (which is far less uncomfortable than…
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Tapped December 17th, 2018

On arrival at the 2018 Fremantle BeerFest, I asked a knowledgeable brewer to name his standout beer from the first day – it’s hard to cover everything so sometimes it’s good to have some on the ground knowledge. Barely pausing for breath, the empathic reply was that I should immediately head to Boston Brewing’s stand to try the "beer of the festival" swiftly followed by the suggestion it should probably be enjoyed with a bowl of muesli. Curiosity piqued, similar feedback was garnered…
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Tapped December 15th, 2018

It tends to be a good sign when the first thought to cross your mind when finishing a beer is: “Damn. I wish I’d bought two of those.” Such was the case after sharing a can of The Prince, a bergamot infused India saison from the New England Brewing Company.
This is a beer that seems to be at the crossroads of what the Uralla brewery is all about. It’s got the basic foundation of a popular style of beer, by way of the heavy hopping regime of an IPA. It also plays to their preference for producing…
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Tapped December 14th, 2018

Unlike Brisbane (and the rest of Queensland), Dortmund in Germany isn’t known for cyclones. But it’s a beautiful city with a river and a love for beer, so we’ll accept Newstead’s take on a Dortmunder lager with open arms this summer.
The 2018/19 Cyclone Season has the malt flavours hiding in the background, and the yeast character lying flat on the ground. It’s the reckless hop flavours standing tall, staring down the storm: fresh melons are rolling in the wind, a touch of spice is in the…
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Tapped December 14th, 2018

For the first five years of Newstead Brewing’s existence, their core range included a pale ale and a golden ale… which is really just a kind of pale ale. There was no lager in the lineup, yet many people were constantly asking for a lager. They introduced their seasonal lagers to address this, but still the people cried for lager. And so Newstead listened to their fans and brought a lager into the core range in an interesting way: they simply fermented The Mayne Thing with a lager yeast and at…
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Tapped December 14th, 2018

Having been invited to brew a new beer for Carwyn Cellars' 2018 Canvent Calendar, the Little Bang crew figured they needed to stand out from the crowd, because, let’s be honest, the calendar was always likely to feature a fair whack of NEIPAS. So, for their entry, two styles converge, with the ubiquitous NEIPA colliding with a sour base beer. According to head brewer Fil Kemp: “There is a lot going on in there,” and he's right, with the sNEIPA messing with the drinker’s mind… and taste…
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Tapped December 13th, 2018

As 2018 draws to a close, the double IPA that's the bigger sibling to Black Hops' core range Hornet, has been given a run in cans. And, for all the attention that's been garnered by NEIPAs and Brut IPAs (and, to a lesser yet still considerable degree, milkshake IPAs) this past year, the arrival of Super Hornet is the latest in a pretty steady stream of such beers to have come our way, suggesting that, for all the fascination with outrageous fruit salads and low bitterness, there's still an appetite…
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The Crafty Pint is an independent online magazine and resource for anyone interested in craft beer in Australia. We bring an honest, old-fashioned journalistic approach to beer's brave new world, telling stories because they're worth telling not because someone is paying us to write them.

Like many of the people who have changed the face of beer in Australia, we believe in authenticity, integrity, enjoyment and love. We hope to play a role in helping good beer, brewed by good people, find its way into the hands of more drinkers.